The Preoccupied Soul

He walked once, mind full of sky,
Barefoot in dawn’s slow whisper.
A wind sang secrets in the grass
He heard them all, then listened past.

But came the word, the wheel, the fire,
A story carved in stone, in lyre.
He lingered near the hearth too long,
Lost in another man’s old song.

The wireless hissed its morning hum,
Crackling truths that never come.
He tuned the dial, his hands grown still,
Chained gently by the voice’s will.

Then vision flickered in a box,
A flick of wrist, a world unlocks.
Empires laughed, and lovers cried,
While dreams outside the window died.

A man passed, walkman in hand
Beats and bass in headlong land.
Head bowed low in urban streams,
He danced alone through other’s dreams.

Then phones were smart and life was not.
The now became a scrolling plot.
A thousand friends, yet none to touch,
A world that never asked too much.

Now reels and pods and filtered face,
A tap, a swipe, our time, erased.
The dinner cold, the child unheard,
The sunset lost behind a word.

She sits, he stands, both side by side,
Yet minds adrift on algorithm tide.
Their bodies here, their spirits sold
Their days exchanged for hearts and gold.

But listen, still, the silence waits.
The rustle at the garden gates.
The book unread, the sky unsought,
The life unlived, the soul unwrought.

So pause, dear heart, and lift your gaze,
Step backwards through the thinning haze.
The world is more than touchscreens' call
It waits for you, it weeps for all.